Protégé Sunday

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Welcome to a special Sunday in the life of our church.

It's Protege Sunday, as you've heard.

My name is Roland, and I get to serve as one of the pastors on our staff team.

And I've had the honor and the privilege of getting to lead this year's cohort.

But what I really wanted to start this morning with are these words from the Apostle Paul to his protege, Timothy.

If you don't know the story, Paul takes under takes under his wing this like young church leader, Timothy, and he's he's become his mentor.

And he writes him these letters, and in one of these letters, writing to Timothy, Paul says this You then, my son Timothy, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, and trust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.

So, Church, Paul has this thought in mind that essentially when he's saying this, he's saying that because of God's goodness, because of Jesus' grace in my life, Paul's saying, I've been given much.

So what I'm gonna do is now I will give that to you, Timothy.

And Timothy, with that, why I'm giving it to you is that you would also give that to others.

Why?

So that they might also be given much and also give much to more people.

Paul kind of says it a little bit differently in another letter in our New Testament.

Um he says, follow me as I follow Christ.

And I remember when I first heard that, I'm like, man, that seems like such a bold thing for Paul to say, right?

That that sounds like incredibly um, I don't know, like such a high thing to say about yourself.

But Paul, he says this so boldly because he's convinced that this way of doing church, this model of discipleship is really the way forth to deposit uh to younger generations that they might go ahead and deposit into future generations after them.

And Paul he says this so boldly, partly because it wasn't his idea.

This is actually Jesus' idea first.

Um, if you're familiar, Jesus' parting words after his life, death, and resurrection, one of the last things he says to his followers is this all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I'm with you to the very end of the age.

In other words, if you were to ask Jesus, Jesus, like what's what's your grand rescue plan for this world?

If I were to ask him that, he would actually turn it around and say, It's you, it's you, and it's me.

Jesus' plan A is to send all those who have received hope, restoration, and love.

And we in turn get to offer hope to the hopeless, restoration to the broken, love to the seemingly unlovable.

And really, there's no plan B.

So Paul's words when he says to entrust a faithful people that will also teach these things to others, it's actually an assignment that's been given from Jesus.

And for those of us here sitting here who consider ourselves Jesus followers, we need to know that.

That this isn't just a Timothy thing, this isn't just a Paul thing, this is a thing that Jesus has asked all of us to partner with him in.

And for those of you who do not yet follow Jesus, then you need to know this: that this is this way of doing the Christian life, it's actually a picture of the gospel.

It's a picture of good news.

It's the good news that Jesus, he wants to bring those who once considered him an enemy to turn them into brothers and sisters and invite them into the family business.

We get to partner with God in that way.

So, really, it's no wonder that as a church, one of the things that we've said for many years now, something that we long to be and continue to be, is a strategic training center raising up the next generation of world changers.

And if you've been here for any amount of time, a couple weeks, a couple years, whatever it is, then you know that we do that in a lot of different ways here at Awakening.

We have an awesome kids' ministry.

We raise up small group leaders throughout all of the Bay Area to meet and gather in homes.

We have a youth ministry that continues to reach more and more students.

We partner with Del Mar and our city in so many different ways.

But probably the most intensive way that we go about uh raising the next generation of world changers is this through a program that you've heard a lot about this morning called Protege.

And what it is is you've heard a little bit about it, Zach said, but for nine months, these proteges have done so much.

So much that I didn't want to like list them all out or I'd be here forever.

But what they've done is they've learned about leadership.

They've met with mentors in our church body, they've gleaned from seasoned ministry leaders, people who've been part of nonprofits and other churches for years to glean wisdom from.

Uh they've learned uh a love for theology and scripture.

They've been asked just last month to preach five-minute sermons, and they were incredible.

All the while, what they've been doing in this nine months is also serving in different capacities and different ministries around awakening.

Name it, cafe, connection, production, family ministry, setup and teardown.

All these things they've been part of.

And if you're in this cafeteria sitting here right now, then the chances are pretty good that a protege has either set up that chair for you at some point or at least put it away.

We don't have magic elves, we have proteges.

But as you can tell, this program, time and time again, it's been key to that vision that we have to be a strategic training center.

And one thing is I myself, almost 10 years ago, have been a graduate of this program.

And earlier Zach talked about what's the there's the fruit of this ministry.

I didn't tell him I was gonna do this, but I looked back.

I went on to Facebook, so there's my age right there.

I went on to Facebook to find a picture of my protege class, and I just I wanted to look at man what happened?

What is the fruit?

What are the results of that program almost 10 years later?

And just from that picture of 12 people, uh, what God produced in the Protege program at Awakening was two people still serving on our staff team, was sending three people as overseas missionaries in the Middle East, uh, raising two youth pastors in the Pacific Northwest, a gospel-centered therapist, and countless others.

Well, I guess you can count them, there's like five of them, uh, making incredible differences in nonprofits and other growing organizations as engineers and and so on.

And man, I love that because uh what I realized is that my class is it was a special one, but then as I looked forward, man, every class it God does something special in all of them.

Except in mine, I also got a brother-in-law, but that's for a different story in it.

Um and man, it's been such an honor to get to be part of this program, to be part of these 12 proteges, uh, this 12 protege cohort.

Because already we have people that are uh pursuing PhDs, working in biomedical stuff, uh looking at what does it look like to be in ministry long term.

Already God is partnering in their stories in this program.

So today, what do we do on Protege Sunday is what we get to do is we actually get to celebrate and to honor this cohort and uh and all that's gone on in this last year.

But also we get to be led by them.

Uh, Zach and Emily, who you got to meet earlier, are some of the most two most fun and hospitable people here at our church.

Um, you've been greeted at the doors or maybe in the parking lot holding signs by proteges wearing these gray shirts.

Um, but what's gonna happen from here is we're gonna get to hear from a couple more proteges.

We're gonna first hear from Emmanuel and get to hear how this program, what God did in his life uh through Protege.

And then following him, uh, Anya's gonna, she what she did is she expanded her five-minute sermon to continue to teach us and eventually lead us into communion.

And at communion, at all these stations that we have uh around the cafeteria in our little cafeteria sanctuary, and if you need gluten-free, it's gonna be the one uh by the prayer station.

Um, after Anya's teaching, uh, we're gonna have a time of communion.

We're at each station, uh, two of our proteges will be there to serve you the bread and the cup.

So that's where we're going this morning as we celebrate the honor and be led by this protege class.

So does that sound good?

Okay, because we're still gonna do it regardless.

So, would you please help welcome up my friend Emmanuel?

Uh I would like to start my testimony by actually expressing my profound gratitude to the leadership of the church, um, my discipleship pastor, who just walked off the stage if you noticed, and my fellow students of the Protege class of 2024 for giving me the opportunity to stand here and give my testimony before the church.

And um, by the way, if we haven't met before, my name is Emmanuel, and I happen to have attended the Protege program in the last nine months with a team of 12 students, which I finally call the 12th disciples, or you may call us the 12th disciples of Jesus.

I don't know if you want to.

But I feel really so blessed to have attended this program for so many reasons.

First, um, the classes from the Protege program actually gave me a reorientation about what ministry truly is, with the understanding that it is actually God's calling for everyone who believes in Christ.

Secondly, I also was able to get more insights about the the I think the way to put it is I got more insights into the other areas that actually could help my spiritual growth, most especially the act of spiritual discipline.

I could remember one of the classes that we had, which was on spiritual discipline, where we actually thought about solitude and silence, fasting and feasting.

As a result of that class, I actually got inspired to actually spend the period prior to the learning season and during the lentin season to fast and pray and actually seek God's face.

And this was what I noticed about this period.

Actually, I realized that I was able to focus on God's word throughout the course of my day, whether I was at work or I was at home.

In fact, a lot of times I could sense the Holy Spirit actually read God's word over me and remind me of the words of the scriptures that I had read in the periods that were outside the time I had set aside to pray and to actually read the word.

And this actually, in a way, made me experience a lot of peace, which I had not had in a very long time.

And fortunately for me, this was strategically important for me at that season or this season, because I was actually going through the challenge of actually failing an exam for about four times at that period.

And so at that at that instance, what I actually got was I go into prayer and actually study God's word.

And I could remember one of the days where I was studying God's word and actually praying.

I stumbled on Exodus chapter four.

And this, if you're not familiar with it, this was the passage where God was actually encouraging Moses to go and talk to Pharaoh and that it was going to do mighty things through him.

So during those moments, I was inspired to go back and retake the exam that I had failed.

So I just simply obeyed and went to take the exam, and the results came back.

And guess what?

I failed again.

So I took the results back to God in the place of prayer just I had just been doing during this period.

And I could remember just expressing myself before God, seeing how dejected I felt.

But one thing the Holy Spirit did to me was to encourage me and make me realize how God is a promise keeper.

In fact, he even gave me the right words, mostly making me more confident in the fact that God can do all things.

So all I did in the place of prayer was just to go ahead and praise God for who he is, knowing that he's a promise keeper.

And I went out of that prayer room to actually audaciously go and request for a rescore of the exam that had actually failed.

And to my greatest surprise, the result of the rescore came back, and I actually did excellently well.

And I think another thing that the Protege program actually helped me to see due to that event was that I actually know that God is actually faithful in all things and that there is no hopeless situation before Him.

And that really strengthened my faith.

Something else this Protege program helped me to do was actually to encourage me to take responsibility in the household of faith like this, as one who is accountable to God, where I could actually serve with the space team and actually work and support other people, and people could get to encourage me, and I could get to encourage them to and just get the blessings of what community truly means.

I think lastly, one of the things that I also noticed was that due to the mentorship program, I was offered this mentorship by one of the program mentors in person of Rajvit Rujondu, who actually took his time with me and allowed me to express my fears, most especially my fears about my career, my spiritual life, even my fears of being an immigrant.

And I realized one of the things he was able to do with me was actually prayerfully advise and guide me, and he kept on encouraging me to pray and keep praying.

Having said all of these things, and coming out of this Protege program, this is all that I can say.

That I am so confident that no matter what the future may look like, even though I don't know what the future is going to look like exactly, that I am confident that God is with me and I can trust that His grace is able to carry me beyond now, no matter what the life might put to me.

So, with this, I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of the Protej 2024 program.

And I would like to say I love you from the bottom of my heart.

God bless you and God bless the church.

Without any further ado, I would also like you to hear and prepare your heart to listen to what God is going to be saying through another amazing friend of mine in person of Anya.

Thank you.

Good morning, church.

My name is Anya, like Roland mentioned, and I have been serving as the Connection Team protege these past few months.

Um, and at Awakening, the vision of the Connection team is to create a warm and inclusive environment for everyone who walks in our doors.

And so, although I haven't met all of you, I feel like I've seen most of you, whether it's been walking in from the parking lots or how about the white tenant or awakening 101, which is after this service, um, or on your connection cards that you fill out.

So it's been truly a special time to get to know the church this past few nine months.

And if I haven't met you yet, I a little bit more about me.

I grew up in San Jose my whole life, moved away for college, and then came back to work these last two years.

And so it's really been a special time of rest and reflection, and so I thought I would start by sharing a key moment in my spiritual journey that I've been reflecting on these past few years.

Growing up Catholic, I was seven years old when I received my first Holy Communion, and I remember on the car ride home, my grandfather asked me, Anya, how does it feel to have Jesus in your heart now?

And I just remember being only seven years old, feeling confused because I didn't feel any different.

I noticed that I often feel disconnected from my emotional experience, perhaps as a byproduct of growing up with immigrant parents and learning the values of hard work and resilience and just pushing through, or growing up with this Western worldview where our ability for rational thought is so highly valued in school, being praised for being smart or doing well academically, or just my own personality, I just tend to be a more calm, even killed person.

I eventually realized that my identity as an intellectual or rational person was limiting to my understanding of God's love and even led to times of doubt in my spiritual journey.

And I, reflecting on what my grandfather said, I realized I didn't know what it meant to have Jesus in my heart because I thought I was a mind.

And Jesus too acknowledges that we're more than our mind.

In Mark 12, 30, he commands us to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strengths.

And so even if you have a strong EQ, this struggle to know God's love more deeply is not new.

And so today we will be looking at the book of Ephesians to learn more about what it means to have an embodied love, to know God's love in a deeper way.

And so if you have your Bibles, we can turn to Ephesians 3, 14 through 21.

And as you're turning there, a little bit of context.

In Ephesians, Paul is writing to a multi-ethnic group of believers in Ephesus, and he's reminding them of the centrality of the gospel.

That is, because of Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and defeat over sin, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are able to experience communion with God.

And in this uh prayer or in this passage specifically, Paul is praying a prayer for spiritual strength for this church.

So we can begin in verse 14.

Paul prays, For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

And so I want to make three observations from this prayer.

The first being that we are in need of strength.

On our own, we can't understand everything.

And it takes humility to go before God and recognize, like Ryan mentioned last week, that we have limitations, that we're humans and we're weak, and we need to ask God for strength.

And the good news is that we have an all-powerful God who, when we go to, when we recognize we're weak, he's faithful to empower us with his spirit.

So for one, we are in need of strength.

Two, the Greek word Paul uses when he says to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, refers to deep interpersonal.

Knowledge, to know through personal experience, and is even at times used to describe physical intimacy.

That is, knowing that God loves me isn't just something to intellectualize, because, like Paul says, um, the the love of Christ surpasses knowledge.

God surpasses our knowledge of Him, and in Jesus we are invited to know this love more deeply and even physically.

And so, what could that possibly look like to know God's love physically?

We will come back to that later.

And three, the love which Paul describes is not a passing emotional experience.

He describes being rooted and grounded in love that Christ would dwell in our hearts.

And so this reflects a sense of permanence and stability, not an emotional experience that we need to chase after.

There is a danger with chasing after emotional experiences of God or what we expect to experience.

When we sing and worship or we pray or we read our Bibles, we may expect God to show up in a certain way.

And certainly God does meet us in all of those ways, but he can also meet us in infinitely more ways than we could imagine.

And so it's important to remember that we cannot control how God chooses to reveal himself to us.

And in verses 20 and 21, Paul reminds us that it's God who is at work within us, and it's about him being glorified.

And so, how do we come to know this embodied love of God, to know God's love more than just something we know in our mind, but with our whole being?

Well, for one, like Paul, we must go to the Lord in prayer.

It starts with our relationship with Jesus.

In fact, this prayer is so important that Jesus too prays this prayer for us in John 17 before going to the cross for future believers, that we would be able to grasp this mystery and gift that is being filled with all the fullness of God.

In John 17, 26, Jesus prays to the Father, I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

Personally, daily contemplative prayer practices like breath prayer or imaginative prayer or Lectio Divina, the slow prayerful reading of scripture, have been really special ways, special and powerful ways for me to become more attuned to my body, my mind, my emotions, and my desires, and to bring all of that before God and as Jesus would say, to abide in his love.

And so I encourage you to try that out this week.

Take a moment to be still and experience that love of Jesus.

And two, I want to point us back to communion, which is a physical way of knowing God's love for us.

Communion is when we gather together and we eat the bread and we drink the wine and we remember Jesus' physical body and physical blood, which was given up for us.

In verse 18, Paul prays that we would have strength to know the love of Christ with all the saints, not just individually.

How significant is it that our God lived among us, ate with human beings, and drank with them and shared this intimate meal, and gave us this physical and communal way to remember his love, knowing that we have the tendency to forget or to compartmentalize our spiritual lives.

Cole Arthur Riley, in one of her writings, says this.

And know that as you're participating in this miracle of communion with God, trust that as you eat and drink, that God is actually with us in this space, no matter what you feel or expect.

And so join me in prayer.

God, as we remember that you physically came to this earth, that your body and blood were given up for us, we ask that you would give us strength through the power of your spirit to know this love of Christ, which is which surpasses our knowledge, that we would become a community filled with all the fullness of you, God.

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